It’s summertime and the living is easy? Try telling that to Davey as he performs yoga poses trying to fit into last year’s swimming trunks.
For most of us though summer does mean some time off for barbecues in the rain.
But just as everyone else is reappraising their summer wardrobes – also known as the divesting of the winter fleece – August is the ideal time for PR and marketing professionals to overhaul their content offering.
Unless a brand or client needs a summer publicity push, the chances are copy sign-offs are less urgent and lead times extended, leaving content managers, marketing executives, and publicity officers with time to take stock of their offerings.
Here are some of our top tips for a content workout.
Time for a clear out
Be ruthless with your site in the same way you need to be with that tie-dye sarong that looked so good in Ibiza five years ago.
Anything that’s passed its sell-by date or is no longer relevant to your audience needs to be ditched.
Still in fashion?
Get the best value out of your content by refreshing it. A few tweaks might be all it needs to become relevant again. Check for duplicate content as it makes a site look sloppy. This goes for missing content too – if you’ve moved content to another page of your website you’ll lose the inbound links so create redirects to allow consumers and search engines to find them again. You might also need to update FAQs, product pages and contact details.
Kick out old keywords
To ensure your content is performing well you need to regularly check keywords within your content. Keywords that perform best routinely change over time so it’s important to review them and revise if necessary.
Be more sociable
By its nature a lot of social media is topical but there are times when you can get ahead with your output. A batch of evergreen posts that won’t date can be useful to have in the bag. If there are any events in the diary why not make a start on composing content you can use down the line? Create an editorial calendar that lets you plan blog and social media posts months ahead.
Check out the competition
Take some time to look at what your competitors are doing and how they’re doing it. You might pick up some ideas and it gives you the chance to evaluate your own efforts.
Finally, why not give your own career a summer workout by viewing the hottest PR & Marketing vacancies on s1jobs?